Dioxide Materials

Dioxide Materials was founded in 2009 in Champaign, Illinois, and is now headquartered in Boca Raton, Florida. Its main business is to develop technology to lower the world's carbon footprint. Dioxide Materials is developing technology to convert carbon dioxide, water and renewable energy into carbon-neutral gasoline (petrol) or jet fuel. Applications include CO₂ recycling,ARPA-E Brief: ''Converting CO₂ Into Fuels and Chemicals'
 
/ref> sustainable fuels production and reducing curtailment of renewable energyLori Bird, Jaquelin Cochran, and Xi Wang, ''Wind and Solar Energy Curtailment: Experience and Practices in the United States'', NREL Report NREL/TP-6A20-60983, March 2014 (i.e. renewable energy that could not be used by the grid).

Carbon Dioxide Electrolyzer Technology

Carbon Dioxide electrolyzers are a major part of Dioxide Materials' business. The work started in response to a Department of Energy challenge to find better catalysts for electrochemical reduction of carbon dioxide.A. Bell et al. Basic research needs catalysts for energy, DOE PNNL-17214 At the time the overpotential (i.e. wasted voltage) was too high, and the rate too low for practical applications. Workers at Dioxide Materials theorized that a bifunctional catalyst consisting of a metal and an ionic liquid might lower the overpotential for electrochemical reduction of carbon dioxide. Indeed, it was found that the combination of two catalysts, silver nanoparticles and an ionic liquid solution containing equal volumes of 1-ethyl-3-methylimidazolium tetrafluoroborate (EMIM-BF4) and water, reduced the overpotential for CO₂ conversion to carbon monoxide (CO) from about 1 volt to only 0.17 volts.Brian A. Rosen, Amin Salehi-Khojin, Michael R. Thorson, W. Zhu, Devin T. Whipple, Paul J. A. Kenis, Richard I Masel * , ''Ionic Liquid-Mediated Selective Conversion of CO₂ to CO at Low Overpotentials'', Science Vol. 334 no. 6056 pp. 643-644 (2011) . Workers from other laboratories have subsequently reproduced the findings on many metals, and with several ionic liquids. Dioxide Materials has shown that a similar enhancement occurs during alkaline water electrolysisZengcai Liu, Syed Dawar Sajjad, Yan Gao, HongzhouYang. Jerry J.Kaczur. Richard I.Masel, ''The effect of membrane on an alkaline water electrolyzer'', International Journal of Hydrogen Energy 42(50), 29661-29665 (2017) and the hydrocarboxylation of acetylene ("Reppe chemistry").

At this point, there is still some question about how the imidazolium is able to lower the overpotential for the electrochemical reduction of carbon dioxide. The first step in the electrolysis of CO₂ is the addition of an electron into the CO₂ or a molecular complex containing CO₂. The resultant species is labeled "CO₂¯" in the figure on the left. It requires at least an electron-volt of energy per molecule to form the species in the absence of the ionic liquid.Chemistry Views (Elsevier) Converting CO₂ with Less Energy That electron-volt of energy is largely wasted during the reaction. Rosen at al postulated that a new complex forms in presence of the ionic liquid so that 1 eV of energy is not wasted. The complex allows the reaction to follow the green pathway on the figure on the right. Recent work suggests that the new complex is a zwitterion Other possible pathways (i.e. non-zwitterions) are discussed in Keith et al. Rosen at al. Verdaguer-Casadevall et al. and Shi et al.

Sustainion Membranes

Unfortunately, ionic liquids were found to be too corrosive to be used in practical carbon dioxide electrolyzers. Ionic liquids are strong solvents. They dissolve/corrode the seals, carbon electrodes and other parts in commercial electrolyzers. As a result, they were difficult to be used in practice.
In order to avoid the corrosion, Dioxide Materials switched from ionic liquid catalysts to catalytic anion exchange polymers.R. I. Masel, Qingmei Chen, Zengcai liu, Robert Kutz, ''Ion Conducting Polymers'', US patent 9580824 A number of polymers were tested and the imidazolium functionalized styrene polymer shown in the figure on the right showed the best performance. The membranes were tradenamed Sustainion. The use of Sustainion membranes raised the current and lifetime of the CO₂ electrolyzer into the commercially useful range.R.F. Service, ''Two new ways to turn ‘garbage’ carbon dioxide into fuel'' Science, Sept 1, 2017 Steven K Ritter, ''CO₂ Electrolyzer Nears Commercialization'', C&E News, Volume 93 Issue 13 , p. 30 . March 30, 2015Mark Harris, ''The entrepreneurs turning carbon dioxide into fuels'', The Guardian, 14 Sept 2017 ''SAVVY: Turning Carbon Dioxide into products'' New Straitus Times, Dec 3, 2017. Michael Foertsch, These methods turn CO2 into cheap energy, Wired,Sept 24, 2017 Sustainion membranes have shown conductivities above 100 mS/cm under alkaline conditions at 60 °C, stability for thousands of hours in 1M KOH, and offer a physical mechanical stability that is useful for many different applications. The membranes showed a lifetime over 3000 hours in CO₂ electrolyzers at high current densities. More recent research has noted that a cell membrane that has an optimized cathode has the capability of running for up to 158 days at 200 mA/cm² . Zengcai Liu et al 2018 J. Electrochem. Soc. 165 J3371
DOI 10.1149/2.0501815jes

References

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Electrochemical engineering
Chemical companies of the United States
Companies based in Boca Raton, Florida
Carbon dioxide
Climate change